Floyd County, GA Outdoor Lighting: Billboard Lighting (2026)

Floyd County's ULDC regulates a billboard as "a freestanding sign that exceeds the maximum sign face or sign structure area permitted by right on a property," allowed up to 400 square feet of sign face and 40 feet in height in specific commercial and industrial districts near a state or U.S. highway. Lighting for that sign face is governed by Section 6.6.8, the county's exterior lighting standard, which applies to all outdoor lighting above 230 lumens in residential zones and 500 lumens (600 for fluorescent) in non-residential zones, a threshold any illuminated billboard face clears many times over.

Under that section, fixtures illuminating any sign, billboards included, must be downward-directed and shielded so the light does not project above or beyond the sign face. Upward-directed sign lighting, such as ground-mounted floodlights aimed up at a sign, is banned outright, with a single narrow exception for monument signs under six feet in overall height, a category that excludes every billboard given the code's own 40-foot height allowance. The same section also caps the light a property may throw across its line: no more than 0.5 foot-candles where it borders a residential use, or 1.0 foot-candles at a line bordering non-residential or public use, and it flatly bans "high intensity, laser, and any similar lighting." Enforcement runs through the Chief Building Inspector under Article 7's inspection and enforcement provisions.